Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions.

“Also, because forcing people to introspect to find reasons for their attitudes can change those attitudes temporarily (T. D. Wilson et al., 2000; T. D. Wilson & Schooler, 1991), standard moral judgment interviews might not even provide a valid measure of people's real moral beliefs.”

“Other research by Wilson and colleagues (e.g. Wilson et al., 1993; Wilson & Schooler, 1991) shows that the quality of decision making suffers when affective inputs are suppressed by having decision makers think systematically about the pros and cons of a decision Research by Zajonc (1980, 1984a,…”

“A concluding section follows.”

“The evidence for superiority of unconscious decision-making is that people may make better decisions as measured by normative analysis or by correspondence with expert judgments (Wilson & Schooler 1991) when conscious deliberation is prevented by shortage of time or by competing tasks.”

“There is also interesting experimental evidence that deliberative thinking blocks access to one’s emotional reactions to objects and so reduces the quality of decisions (e.g., Wilson and Schooler 1991).”

“…feelings could lead to a reduction in those feelings, this result is consistent with other behavioral research (Silvia 2002, Wilson et al. 2005, Wilson & Schooler 1991) and highlights the fact that feelings themselves and thoughts about feelings are not necessarily isomorphic (Lieberman 2006).”

“While intuition theorists have not referred specifically to intellective and judgmental tasks, research has shown that intuition may be most effective for moral judgments (Haidt, 2001), aesthetic ratings (Hammond et al., 1987; Wilson & Schooler, 1991), and the like.”

“Of the studies that did meet our inclusion criteria, some were excluded because they lacked an attitude measure (e.g., Berning & Jacoby, 1974; Chaiken, 1979; Wilson & Schooler, 1991 ) or did not report the attitude– behavior correlation (e.g., Songer-Nocks, 1976).”

“Wilson and Schooler (1991) explicitly argued that the low capacity of consciousness can lead to poor decisions or choices.”

“Automatic processing can lead to better outcomes in nonverbal decoding (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000) or when maximizing the accuracy of preferences (Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Clustering is an associative process, and it is likely that this process was disrupted because, as Wilson and others have shown (e.g., Wilson et al., 1989; Wilson & Schooler, 1991; see also Experiment 2 of the current article), conscious thought biases people toward paying a lot of attention to very few attributes at…”

“Moreover, research has suggested that affective influences, broadly speaking, can improve certain kinds of decisions—at least those that are hedonically based (Wilson & Schooler, 1991). risk assessment.”

“When people focus on their affective reactions to target objects, impulsive processes may gain the upper hand in influencing behavior (eg, Bruyneel, Dewitte, Vohs, & Warlop, 2006 ; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999 ; Wilson & Schooler, 1991 ).”

“Humans, with their impressive cognitive abilities, have been known to think too much about simple choices and preferences, resulting in poorer quality decisions (Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“People are generally unaware of the cues they use in their judgments from faces (Rule et al. 2008) and instructions to deliberate cannot help under such conditions (e.g., Wilson and Schooler 1991).”

“... without sacrificing quality (for example, see Slovic’s, 1969, study of expert stockbrokers; for a discussion of automatic decision making and its sometimes positive results, see Bargh & Ferguson, 2000, or DijksterhuisN Wilson et al., 1993; ...”

“…task used for the purpose of research on cognition can entail the distortion of ordinary, ongoing thought and that multiattribute evaluation in the manner of exhaustive decision analysis can change the ways people reason (compare, for instance, Fernberger, 1937, with Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Interestingly, it has been shown that in certain situations more deliberation leads to less adaptive judgements (Wilson, 2002; Wilson & Schooler, 1991), presumably because analysing reasons can focus people’s attention on non-optimal criteria, which are then used as a basis for the subsequent…”

“…suggests that language (in the form of journaling, for example) can dampen or distance the effects of negative emotions (Pennebaker and Beall, 1986; Wilson and Schooler, 1991; Pennebaker, 1997; Hemenover, 2003), other work suggests that language can also increase the discreteness of an emotion…”

“The latter research typically finds that intuitive or unconscious modes of thinking may sometimes be superior to explicit or conscious modes of thinking (e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2004; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Beyond the domain of motivated reasoning, classic research shows that consciously reflecting on one’s decisionmaking can lead to poorer choices by focusing disproportionate attention on nonoptimal criteria [133], attenuating memory [134], reducing attitude–behavior consistency [135], and lowering postchoice satisfacti…”

“One theory that explains why deliberation can alter survey responses comes from research demonstrating that conscious deliberation, compared to intuition, causes overthinking—more biased and inconsistent informationprocessing (Tordesillas & Chaiken, 1999; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

““final” choices of participants relates to the framework of Wilson and Schooler (1991) that”

“…thought discussed in the previous paragraphs, but also on work by Wilson, Schooler and colleagues (e.g., Schooler & Melcher, 1995; Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993; Wilson, Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989; Wilson et al., 1993; Wilson & Schooler, 1991) on the limitations of conscious thought.”

“…on price–quality relationships and consumer learning about quality more generally (Bagwell and Riordan 1991; Curry and Faulds 1986; Erdem et al. 2008; Gerstner 1985; Hardie et al.1993; Lichtenstein and Burton 1989; Mitra and Golder 2006; Tellis and Wernerfelt 1987; Wilson and Schooler 1991).”

“…unconscious processes in human decisions and behavior (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Chartrand & Bargh, 2002; Chartrand, Huber, Shiv, & Tanner, 2008; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006; Fitzsimons et al., 2002; Kahneman, 2003, 2011; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“…and disadvantages of every choice set option before making a choice or having one imposed on them, they will both be equally engaged in the selection process, and their affective reactions to the process itself will be neutralized (Wilson, Lisle, Schooler, & Hodges, 1993; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Brain oscillations are an effective mechanism to accomplish such a task (Akam and Kullmann 2010; Engel, Fries, and Singer 2001; Womelsdorf et al. 2007).”

“Second, automatic processes presumably are activated quickly and operate eYciently (Bargh, 1994; Kihlstrom, 1987; Webb & Sheeran, 2003; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Even the simple act of identifying why the “want” self is at odds with the “should” self may lead us to understandings that do not cave so quickly to the visceral desires of the “want” self (Bazerman, Tenbrunsel, & Wade-Benzoni, 1998; Loewenstein, 1996; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“…how they know they possess Attribute X, and they can rattle off a list of times they engaged in behaviors indicative of that attribute; however, the generation of reasons after the fact is no guarantee that those reasons guided the initial judgment (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“However, in the case of automatic processes, increased attention paradoxically reduces the efficiency of the process (Gilbert & Krull, 1988; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987; Wilson, Hodges, & LaFleur, 1995; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“When this is the case, small information samples and low expertise may lead to better decisions and higher satisfaction than large samples and high expertise (Fiedler & Kareev, 2006; Hertwig & Pleskac, 2006; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“From research outside of health care [14], deliberative reasoning about pros and cons may cause people to focus on attributes that are obvious, accessible, and easy to articulate, and these attributes may not be the ones that are actually the most important factors in the decision.”

“Likewise, introspection during stimulus presentation may change the experience (Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“When people focus on their affective reactions to target objects, automatic processes gain influence in guiding behaviour (Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“Wilson and Schooler (1991) reported that students who thought carefully about their preference for various jams performed more poorly when judged against expert opinion than students who made more holistic judgments.”

“In contrast to the dominant view in the diagnostic error literature, studies in psychology have shown that analytical approaches are often inferior to System 1 methods ( Wilson and Schooler 1991; Dijksterhuis et al. 2006).”

“Results suggest that, if unsure about their preferences, deliberation can have distorting effects that might not occur if people were more explicitly aware of their preferences (Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989; Wilson & Schooler, 1991).”

“…induce a greater reliance on controlled/reflective processes (Dunning and Stern, 1994; Fallshore and Schooler, 1995; Lieberman, in press; Schooler et al., 1997; Schooler, 2002; Wilson and Schooler, 1991) and indeed this claim is supported both by the Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl.”

“Note also that verbalization during decision making can hurt performance (Schooler & Melcher, 1995; Schooler et al., 1993), and that justification provision can lead to the deterioration of decisions relative to experts’ standards ( Wilson & Schooler, 1991 ).”

“…our results join other prior work that demonstrate the positive roles emotions play in decision making (Bechara et al. 1997; Damasio 1994; Davidson et al. 2000; Dijksterhuis 2004; Loewenstein and Lerner 2002; LeDoux 1996; Peters and Slovic 2000; Pham et al. 2001; Wilson and Schooler 1991).”